Faith-based laws and lack thereof

Recently, there has been a not-so-subtle dislike of anything resembling Sharia law in the United States. Conservative Christians may accuse more liberal secularists of turning a blind eye in the name of tolerance and religious diversity, but all the while Christians defend legislation that could do far more to protect Sharia law than anything the secularists would be comfortable with.

If you have laws in place that prevent government interference in faith-based initiatives, for example, then that should apply whether the faith in question is fundamental Baptist or fundamental Islam. Because governments are intended as ruling bodies — as the instruments of justice and order — the lack of regulation or the lack of punishment for anything that falls within the religious sphere is therefore a political statement. If you’re worried about the observation of Sharia law, you might not need to look much further than your own resistance to the watchful eye of Big Brother.

And making sure that it’s fundamental Baptist rather than Islam isn’t going to do much more than change the name of the deity. Oddly or not, and despite Christians’ claims that they are operating under grace, horror stories of fundamentalism don’t seem to change much from one religion to the next. Even if stoning for adultery isn’t currently legal in many countries, the stronger can still bully the weaker, the crowd still bullies the non-conformist, and maintain their “right” to do so by saying it is the will of God. To the strict fundamentalist, uncovered sin against God, whether you call Him Jehovah or Allah, requires corporal punishment or death. At the very least, it requires being cut off from the faithful in some way. The infractions are similar. The social structure is similar. The obsession with female modesty, female “protection” and female submission is similar.

In Idaho, we have laws still in effect that might be based on Sharia or might be based on the Old Testament. If things like fornication and “video voyeurism” are illegal (and they are), then many of you are unwittingly criminals. Theoretically, you could be jailed for these moral failings.